Vc1 - Put On The New Man Series

Paul's Epistle to the Colossians

4/21/19

Tom Lowe

Lesson VC1 - Put On The New Man, Renewed In The Image Of Our Creator (Colossians 3:10-11)

Scripture: Colossians 3:10-11 (NIV)

10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Lesson VC1

10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

When a man becomes a Christian, there ought to be a complete change in his personality. He puts off his old self and puts on a new self. We very often evade the truth on which the New Testament is adamant; that when a person becomes a Christian there should be change occur in their life and this change will be progressive. This new creation is continually renewed {2]. It makes a man grow continually in grace and knowledge {3] until he reaches that which he was meant to be ? manhood in the spiritual image of God {4].

There is another new creation that I want to mention, the Church is a new creation. Paul declares that Jesus is the Author of the created world (Col. 1:15-17). Everything was made by Him and through Him and for Him. He sustains creation by His own power and holds everything together. Jesus has first place (preeminence) over all creation. He is also the Head over the new creation, the Church (1:18). This is a society of men and women who have been supernaturally created through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

The new creation is the result of Christ's deliverance from the fall of Adam. In the Garden of Eden Adam lived before God in a state of righteousness. However, he acted in disobedience, and the result of his sin was disastrous for mankind. His entire nature was transformed. He became a self-centered individual instead of being Christ-centered. His sin also affected the entire human race. All men now bear the nature of Adam?sinfully depraved and spiritually separated from God. This change has transformed the way we as humans relate to one another. Human society is terribly divided in many ways: language, culture, geography, tradition, and religion. Christ, as the second Adam came to reverse the curse caused by Adam and to create a new society of people. The walls that separated humanity have now been broken down (v. 11) through Christ. God has created a body in which all believers enter and become a part, regardless of one's background. Christ is all that matters now!

11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

One of the great effects of Christianity is that it destroys the barriers. In it, there is neither Greek {5] nor Jew {6], circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian {1], slave nor free man. The ancient world was full of barriers. The Greek looked down on the barbarian; and to the Greek, any man who did not speak Greek was a barbarian, which literally means a man who says "bar-bar." The Greek was the aristocrat of the ancient world and he knew it. The Jew looked down on every other nation. He belonged to God's chosen people, and the other nations were fit only to be fuel for the fires of hell. The Scythian was notorious as the lowest of the barbarians; the Greeks said he is more barbarian than the barbarians and a little short of being a wild beast. He was proverbially the savage, who terrorized the civilized world with his bestial atrocities. The slave was not even classified in ancient law as a human being; he was merely a living tool, with no rights of his own. His master could either beat or brand or maim or even kill him at his whim; he did not even have the right to marry. There could not be any fellowship in the ancient world between a slave and a free man.

In Christ, all these barriers were broken down and this short passage shows the barriers which Christianity destroyed.

(i) It destroyed the barriers which came from birth and nationality. Different nations, who either despised or hated each other, were drawn into the one family of the Christian Church. Men of different nationalities, who would have leaped at each other's throats, sat in peace beside each other at the Table of the Lord.

(ii) It destroyed the barriers which came from ceremony and ritual. Circumcised and uncircumcised were drawn together in the one fellowship. To a Jew, a man from any other nation was unclean; when he became a Christian every man of every nation became a brother.